Puttin' up the groceries now
Just got back from Morristown


Brad Moore, Ahern Rentals Westminster California, 2006

* From "Praise to the Highways" by Roberto Bolano, translated by Natasha Wimmer. Praise to the Highways will be published in English next year by New Directions.

"All praise to the highways and to these moments. Umbrellas abandoned by bums in shopping plazas with white supermarkets rising at the far ends. It’s summer and the policemen are drinking at the back of a bar. Next to the jukebox a girl listens to
the latest hits. Around the same time, someone is walking, far from here, away from here, with no plans to come back. A naked boy sitting outside his tent in the woods? The girl stumbled into the bathroom and began to vomit. When you think about it, we’re not allotted much time here on earth to make lives for ourselves: I mean, to scrape something together, get married, wait for death. Her eyes in the mirror like letters fanned out in a dark room; the huddled breathing shape burrowed into bed with her. The men talk about dead small- time crooks, the price of houses on the coast, extra paychecks. One day I’ll die of cancer. Cleaning utensils begin to levitate in her head. She says: I could go on and on. The kid came into the room and grabbed her by the shoulders. The two of them wept like characters from different movies projected on the same screen. Red scene of bodies turning on the gas. The bony beautiful hand turned the knob. Choose just one of these phrases: 'I escaped torture' . . . 'An unknown hotel' . . . “No more roads” . . . "

* Belle de Jour is no longer anonymous.

* "All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse." -- Benjamin Franklin